Nutmeg Street: Egyptian Secrets
I love a good mystery, especially when I have NO IDEA whodunit. This story definitely fell into that category. I thought I had figured it out by the second chapter, only to have been horribly wrong. (Although, when the guilty party is initially introduced, I did get a feeling that person might be the culprit. But, I was still voting for my first choice until the very end.) This novel had a great storyline and reminded me very much of Nancy Drew. I really wanted to be engaged.
However, I found the story very difficult to read. Despite the line acknowledging the children were brighter and more mature than their age, the dialogue felt very forced and there was an excessive use of dialogue tags, often poorly placed. It was very difficult to relate to the characters, both the children and the adults.
Additionally, a lot of backstory was consistently interrupting the narrative. Many times I felt I were reading a book several volumes into the series and the author was reminding me of what had happened in previous books. There were also many places where I would have liked to have seen the action instead of having the narrator or dialogue tell me what was happening or what had happened during a scene break.
Also, without giving away any spoilers, by the end of the story I was still not sure I understood the importance of the sphynx's broken paw. While it is possible I missed something in the final discussion, I felt it was either not explained very well or was a plot hole that was not sewn up.
Overall, I found myself wanting more out of this book. Ultimately, I would rate this story three quills and place it on my middle shelf.
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